Me Vs Exchange Voicemail.......Je suis the loser :(

A while ago we were all upgraded to Exchange 2007, then a few weeks ago the voice user interface element was let loose on us. This caused great amusement in the office, when we were suddenly able to get voicemails sent through as emails and listen to them on the PC…this was then quickly followed by a lot of people with their heads stooped down close to the speakers on their PC listening to them at a private enough volume, until they realised that they could play them on the phone still! The other new addition was the voice recognition functionality on our mobiles – we can now speak to Exchange and request to hear our email read out, calendar read out or the simple task of listening to our voicemails.....

Last week, we went out for a team lunch to say goodbye to someone that was leaving. When returning, the weather was pretty nice so Bruce decided we could head back with the roof down, at the same time I decided that I needed to listen to my voicemails. So we are now cruising along at 30mph and I have just managed to get through to the lovely automated Exchange lady, “Voicemail” I say. “Sorry I didn’t hear what you said, please repeat”. “Voicemail”. “Sorry. Bla bla bla”. Then in chorus all 4 of us shout “VOICEMAIL”, but to no avail. We tried speaking slower, faster, in French, in Spanish, in German, and by now I have a face full of my hair and shouting at the top of my voice while people driving past thinking I am a loon. At this point, I seem to have managed to annoy an automated person (which even I thought I wasn’t quite up to) as she said “Good bye and terminates the call”

So my valuable learning is.......the Exchange voice lady will ignore you at high speeds with hair in your mouth